


Thick enough to drown

by WrithingBeneathYou



Category: Naruto
Genre: Edo Tensei, M/M, tobirama plays with forces beyond his control
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-15
Updated: 2021-02-15
Packaged: 2021-03-16 08:20:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29450664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WrithingBeneathYou/pseuds/WrithingBeneathYou
Summary: Tobirama has carefully straddled the lands of the living and the damned for a decade in search of the one man he could never let go. This time, he'll sacrifice all he is to get it right...to bring Izunahome.
Relationships: Senju Tobirama/Uchiha Izuna
Comments: 16
Kudos: 65





	Thick enough to drown

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SilverUtahraptor](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilverUtahraptor/gifts).



> <3

Rain falls in torrents. Tobirama can barely see past the wall of water, eyes narrowed against the spray.

He notes the tall shadows of pine trees swaying with the same slow cadence as a man walking, though their wavering trunks never grow nearer. There’s no splish-splash of sandals—not that he would be able to hear them over the roar of the deluge. And so, he continues to wait in the indistinct swath of blue, green, and gray until the pine trees decide to resolve into the silhouette he’s reached out to for nearly ten years now.

One hour. Two. He’s chilled to the bone, but he’ll wait another decade before giving in to the phantom needs of a body he left behind.

By the time twilight leaches away all color from his surroundings, the rain has not abated and his bare feet have sunken into the muddy depression carved out by his own body weight. He’s trapped. Bound by his own hubris.

In the glow of a lightning strike, ghostly gatherings of onibi pulse into existence like ominous fireflies. They float down slowly despite the force of the rain and stretch out to touch him. 

As their ephemeral fingers brush against his skin, vague recollections of his life buffet him as mercilessly as the rain drops.

He remembers a brother’s love withering as those roots grew towards another brook. Broad hands cupping his face even as Hashirama looked past him, through him. They never were able to make amends—his Anija damning him for the egregious sin of surviving a battle. 

Tobirama’s not a sentimental man, but spirits, losing his brother that day was like losing half of himself. Which is why he can understand the inevitability of Madara’s defection—why he can appreciate how grief can be twisted and perverted into something that threatens the very fabric of the world.

He’s here, after all. Straddling the lands of the living and the damned like the weakest of colossi, sodden paper seals clutched tight and proclaiming his own madness. Edo tensei’s tendrils drip from his fist and pour out in a simulacrum of mokuton vines to sift through a reality he can’t touch. He’ll stand in his small circle of protection for as long as it takes and leave only after he’s satisfied. Not yet, though. The gates of the dead are still denied to him.

Another onibi, another rain-soaked vision.

This time, he sees an audacious smile and a burst of red. Uchiha Madara. His gunbai flashes up to rest against Tobirama’s throat just at it had the night Madara left. It wasn’t the blade that hurt so much as the fact that it stopped short. They only ever spoke through violence, but Madara never seemed able to fully commit the way Izuna had. Even his goodbye was hollow in the end.

Not that Tobirama has ever experienced a goodbye that wasn’t.

A myriad of faces he once knew but was never close enough to share in their final moments flit past. Butsuma. Kawarama. Itama. Touka. Hikaku. Eventually, they scatter and resolve into the familiar guise of Tobirama’s true purpose here.

Uchiha Izuna.

His are the only final moments Tobirama truly regrets not being able to share. A second chance is all they need.

An abrupt crack of thunder rocks the forest and scatters the strangle vine of memory. It’s so jarring Tobirama nearly stumbles outside of the circle of his seal work, knowing it would be his downfall. By some stroke of luck, he manages to slam down on his hands and knees a hairsbreadth from his own unmaking. 

The onibi wink out as one and give dominion back to the rain and the twilight.

Shaken, Tobirama stares at the mud oozing between his fingers, the image a series of still frames. He swallows and pants in the spray of the downpour. Close. He’s so close to succeeding where he’s failed a hundred times before. Another hour. Just one more and he’ll have what he came here for.

He prostrates himself fully, forehead coming to rest in the sheets of water spilling over the backs of his hands. Without the visions there to haunt him, softer memories return unbidden. Everything about Uchiha Izuna was a balm for Tobirama even as they tore each other apart on the battlefield.

His knife-edge smile in the sun. Stolen touches in the push and pull of battle. A voice as smooth and powerful as the Naka. 

And then he left. An idiot’s miscalculation and _he left_.

Tobirama clenches his jaw, bellowing through his teeth. He rears back and punches the earth, spattering mud across his naked front over and over again. His knuckles split, blood spills as freely as his tears, and the ground churns.

Blinded as he is by rain, tears, and regret, it’s only the incongruence of slapping sandals rising to the forefront of the cacophony that urges him to look up from his grief. 

In the distance, one of the pine trees begins to sway in counterpoint to the rest. It slowly loses its height as it approaches, taking on the shape of a man. Every step closer slows the deluge until it falters.

Raindrops hover midair. Silence descends like a death shroud.

“You look like shit, Senju,” Izuna says in lieu of a greeting. He bats away a stationary curtain of rain and squats down in front of Tobirama, sly grin so achingly familiar even here in the shadow of dusk.

Tobirama swallows around the growing tightness in his throat. He didn’t consider how seeing that face again—smooth and delicately featured—would run him through. While time may have filled him out and deepened his frown lines, it hasn’t touched Izuna in the same way. Not here in the liminal void set between the lands of the living and the forest of the dead.

“My jutsu…” he rasps, hanging his head so as not to go blind from Izuna’s raptor focus. “It finally worked.”

“Oh, is that what this is?” Izuna asks, snorting.

The amusement in his tone has Tobirama easing back into seiza and very carefully looking up from beneath his sopping hair.

A black drizzle has started up around them. Ink droplets slip though the spaces between the frozen rain. They patter against Izuna’s unbound hair and drip down his face, across his shoulders, in meandering rivulets. The effect is ghastly—like a china doll with the night housed beneath its porcelain.

Izuna laughs.

“You never did know how to keep your hand out of the fire, did you? And here you are throwing your whole damn body in. You shouldn’t play with the natural order of things, Tobirama.” He licks his thumb and rubs at the black cracks on the back of his hand. They continue to stain his pale skin no matter how he tries before sighing and giving up. “Why do you keep coming back here?”

He awaits an answer, head cocked to the side and quite clearly bemused by it all. There’s none of the hatred Tobirama had been expecting when he ultimately succeeded. No lingering vendettas or resentments to pacify. 

Tobirama clears his throat and wipes the mud from his hands off on his chest. He holds them out. “I’m taking you home,” he says, meaning so much more.

Rolling his eyes, Izuna scoffs and flicks his fingertips. “Don’t be silly. We’re already home.” When Tobirama refuses to fold, he sighs. “You don’t get it. Come on, I’ll show you.” With that, he glances down at the disturbed seal-work half-interned in the mud and tentatively reaches over it to slide his palm against Tobirama’s. Then further. Strong fingers close around Tobirama’s wrists.

“I’ve waited a long time for that little jutsu of yours to get you close enough,” he croons.

One powerful jerk sees Tobirama slipping out of the shattered protective circle and into Izuna’s Shinigami arms. He instinctively struggles as his heart slows.

It’s a cold embrace and an even colder kiss that steals his last mortal breath. 

But in the end, it’s not a hollow goodbye.

It’s the only one that managed to lead him home.


End file.
